Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/601

Rh waves of electricity. These alternate currents are converted into an intermittent current moving in one direction only by means of a commutator. The second armature revolves 1,800 times a minute, generating 3,600 alternately-opposed waves of electric force, which are picked up and sent in one direction by a commutator, as in the former case.

It is evident that when a good friction contact is to be kept between pieces of metal moving at these enormous velocities, the wear and tear is very great. For a long time, however, it was thought that these difficulties were inherent to the magneto-electric machine, until electricians found, first, that the almost instantaneous flash of the current could be considerably lengthened out, and then that the successive waves generated could be so produced as to flow in the same instead of in opposite directions.

These important desiderata are supplied in a magneto-electric machine of a novel form, invented by M. Gramme. The principle is not difficult to understand. Take a long bar of soft iron, E, E', Fig. 1,



round which is coiled an insulated copper wire; to this bar, forming an electromagnet, let a permanent magnet, S N, be presented, the south pole being nearest to the iron bar. Now move the permanent magnet in the direction of the arrow parallel with itself, with a uniform velocity, and always maintaining the same distance from the bar. The south pole of the permanent magnet will produce a north magnetic pole in the portion of the iron bar nearest to it; and the gradual displacement of this pole from one end to the other of the iron bar, caused by the motion of the magnet, will induce in the surrounding wire an electric current which may be rendered evident by the galvanometer, G. This current will not be instantaneous: it will continue to flow during the whole time the magnet is moving between the two ends, E E', of the iron bar, and its time of duration may therefore be varied at pleasure.

This experiment shows that it may be possible, by proper arrangements, to realize a machine which will furnish a continuous current of electricity for as long as may be desired. We have only to imagine the electro-magnet, instead of being the straight bar shown in Fig. 1, bent into a circular form as at E, E', E", E'", Fig. 2.